Alright, so here’s what we know: Chet Faker absolutely dominated 2014 with his debut album, Built On Glass, which spawned several hugely popular singles and made him one of Australia’s most in-demand singers and producers.
We also know that the man, whose real name is Nick Murphy, has been busy working on a follow-up to his smash debut and if you’ve been paying attention to the rumours, you’ll know that it’s rife with hot collaborations.
In addition to forcing journalists “to use adjectives outside the word ‘chilled’ and ‘crooner’ and ‘bearded’ and all that shit they’ve been running with”, Faker’s new album could feature collaborations with Todd Terje, Nils Frahm, and Ruban Nielson.
However, Murphy has now cleared up some of the wild rumours circulating his eagerly anticipated and “heavily performance-based” second album, which he says will be less electronic and more focused on “rhythm, groove-based stuff”.
“These things get kind of blown out of proportion because everyone gets so excited when an artist they like mentions another artist they like,” Murphy recently told triple j hosts Veronica and Lewis.
“We did a session at the start of the year — that’s right,” Murphy said of his collab with Nielson. “Ruban and I, we hung out once and did a session, which was cool and we wrote a pretty fun song but I don’t think that’s going to go anywhere. So that was cool.”
As for Todd Terje, well: “That never happened,” Murphy told the national youth broadcaster. “I mentioned that I was talking to him backstage, so that got kind of blown out of proportion as well.”
“Rick Rubin isn’t working with me on my album either, so this is good that we’re clearing this up,” Murphy continued. “This is a good display for everyone out there of the 24-hour news cycle and what happens when people get bored.”
In fact, Murphy’s sophomore full-length effort will likely just feature “me, myself and I”. The songwriter said he did hope to work with more people on his second album, but his busy touring schedule got in the way.
“I’ve been living in Brooklyn but I just moved into the city in Manhattan, just before I left on this tour,” he said. “But the plan was to branch out and work with more people but then I’ve been touring so much it just didn’t really work.”
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“Then I finally got home and had a studio and all I knew was how to do what I’d done, and then all of a sudden I had the framework of an album and I was like, ‘Ok, looks like I’m going to do it on my own again.’”
“But yeah, collabs are good; because I didn’t have a studio, reaching out to guys like Marcus [Marr] was the only way I could kind of make stuff. Plus, I could never make the stuff we made on my own. That’s what I wanted, I wanted to make something like this, you know? The funk.”
Murphy refers, of course, to his very funk-tastic new collaboration with British producer Marcus Marr, titled ‘The Trouble With Us’, which dropped earlier this month. Readers can check out the new single in all its funky glory below.
